Before the huge upgrade in connection speeds, live streams, etc, there were very few sights that gave much data or decklists during the early days of Magic.  As the game grew and as connection speeds increased, the game's coverage grew.  Now, in a fully digital age, the largest daily information that players get is from MTGO Daily events.  The metagame can change from one queue to the next, so the tech that players come up with is obsolete more quickly online (and therefore they catch on quicker to the powerhouse decks).

However, MTGO is where a lot of players go to attempt to 'break' the format.  After what happened with the banning of Intangible Virtue and Lingering Souls in Innistrad Block Constructed (Pre-Avacyn Restored), WotC might be a bit gun shy of letting players gather all that data.

I understand this aspect of trying to keep players from breaking a format too quickly as this leads to a stagnate format sooner and so players don't play as much, quit, or just take a break from the game.  There are some issues with this plan of Wizards and Magic R&D:

While this does cut down on Netdecking, this also makes it harder for deck designers.

When you have less data, it is harder for you to correctly guess the metagame, therefore the innovators will be less inclined to try to move the format along because they cannot due so without much more of a risk if they are wrong.

This hurts the grinders much more than it hurts the pros.

This is the part that really gets me.  Pros have teams and even extend those teams for testing for large events.    Most grinders in more data to make educated decisions on the metagame since most of them do not have advanced teams like Team Channel Fireball.  Pro Teams did have a distinct advantage over most normal grinders due to the fact they were (on average) better deck builders, better playtesters, and had more results to go by.  Some of this was mitigated by the fact that MTGO (as well as Star City Games, Channel Fireball and TCG Player) had tons of decklists that could be looked at an analysed, making it easier for the grinder to get important information.  Now, with this decision by Magic R&D, the grinder is the one getting hurt by this decision.

Getting information for the daily grinder so that you can get to the next level is WHY I created The Phyrexian Arena blog & podcast, and I'm not going to let a thing like this announcement stop the innovation train.  If you don't like the Magic R&D decision, let your voice be heard!